


you have lost your sway and glow

by jonsrightrib (sotakeabitofcalpol)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Lonely! Tim, References to Depression, listen i have feelings and oh boy is Tim getting them, metaphors skating the line of body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:22:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24395698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sotakeabitofcalpol/pseuds/jonsrightrib
Summary: anger is a stage of grief too. everyone had forgotten that.Aka: Tim finds the Lonely
Kudos: 19





	you have lost your sway and glow

**Author's Note:**

> So basically I had a thought about how s3 Tim is in the same sorta place as s4 Martin and this shit happened. It’s not well written 
> 
> Also minor triggers for an extended metaphor about choking/ suffocating (it’s not actually happening but so you know)

Timothy Stoker is not a quiet man. He isn't subtle, and everyone he's ever met has ended up a friend within an impressively short length of time.

Tim Stoker, by extension, cannot be lonely. Not with all these people. Anger, he can do, mostly because it's justified, as probably safer than sinking into his grief.

The anger is bone deep, carved into his soul by what's probably the same grief that filled him with the happy-go-lucky attitude not too long ago. Both have wrapped around his throat, suffocating him for so long he doesn't know how to breathe anymore.

The mist is different.

The mist seeps down his throat, filling his lungs with a sickly numbness that should be far worse. It crawls through his veins, a beat almost by itself, cool against hot blood. Danny and Sasha had both teased him about that, when they were both still alive. He'd laughed back then. Now he'd rather his blood turn to shards of ice and carve through his veins than be reminded of how they'd loved that warmth he can't shake. If the mist can do that, then fine. It can stay.

* * *

He doesn't notice at first, when everything starts to fade. He doesn't keep mirrors in his flat, not since he kept getting caught on the scars from Prentiss's attack. Nobody's left to point it out to him, not when Jon and Martin have stopped being the people they all used to be, back then. If everything in your world fades or leaves, there's no way really tell, no baseline to compare to. Nothing is familiar anymore, and he hates it with the only emotion he has left.

No, he catches himself in a shop window one day and notices his hair has faded. He can't blame it on dye like he could a few months ago, the blue has long since grown out of hair that was once cropped close, but now brushes the tops of his ears. He moves closer to the window, and realises his skin isn't just paler because he works in a basement, he wasn't misremembering his eye colour like he'd assumed; he looks like someone turned the saturation down on a photo, like plastic left out in the sun. Melanie wasn't joking when she accused him of being a pale imitation of the man she'd once vaguely known.

* * *

The vice around his throat is still there, but the mist is forcing his throat open, and he can breathe now, if not deeply. He can breathe now, as long as he's breathing in more of the smoke.

Jon won't talk to him. He'd driven him away, the tiny bit further that they could possibly drive each other, what with the anger from him and the paranoia from Jon. He can see him try to say something, sometimes, but he won't. Jon Knows he can't fix this, or Tim. He can see the smoke, and he's scared of it. Tim doesn't really know why. The mist is safe.

Martin plays him a song. It's something he'd do, Tim pointedly doesn't think, if he couldn't put something into his own words for someone he cares about. He recognises it faintly. Martin cries. Asks him to talk, tells him he isn't in this alone. Loses the soft thing that passes for Martin's temper and screams through sobs at him to take his hands from over his eyes. He doesn't say anything. There's nothing to say. He leaves Martin there, and quashes down the last of what might once have been guilt with what is still somehow savage joy.

Basira asks if he's bleached his hair, the next morning. He lies, says yes. He knows what's done this to him, and it feels like an embrace he hasn't had in a long time, approval, something at his side. The white of his hair is almost a comfort.

* * *

He'll never truly be a part of the mist. He's too angry for that. But it's quiet here, and the grief is oh so gentle, so he might stay a while.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel really sorry for anyone who read Double the Trouble and expected all my works to be like that; sorry, that’s the exception I write angst
> 
> The title is from Friend, Please by Twenty One Pilots, which is also the song Martin plays as a fun bit of trivia


End file.
